Below is an excerpt from a book I’ve been writing forever it seems.

Shortly after Donna died I was waiting for the elevator feeling a bit of pride. Here I was venturing out into the world. Leaving the house following her death was about chores. Not much else. There was no reason to leave the warm embrace of memories and our home. Seeing and feeling all she did and left behind. The chores were about food, postoffice, and the bank. Not a very exhaustive list.

This time it was not a chore. It was different I wanted to wander in the sunlight. Prove something to myself. I wanted to matter to me. To just have a presence in the world. Leaving the house was an emotional effort which became harder with each passing year. Finding any comfort in doing it became a diminishing return.

It happens after the loss of a loved one the world folds in on itself as you do. There were less friends asking about Donna. Wanting me to share a story about her. Having any meaning and purpose was a vague notion. Walking the city alone without a hand to hold. Donna stopping at a window looking intently at a sweater and trying not to say “You don’t need another sweater.” “Yes I do and that’s the one I want. My money my choice.” Said with a side eye.

Leaving the house was just me warming my life in the sun.The apartment was were we were us. Donna was gone I could not see my reflection in the storefront windows without her. She was my reflection.

Let me just tell you. I know you might be judging me and my isolation. Thinking it’s time to move on. It's and I’m not. Closure is denial of Donna said pretty. She loved me into being and as much as this home and everything in it speaks her name. Our life. I still hold onto the desire to share her with others so she will not die. I read somewhere that you die three times. Once when your heart stops. Once when you’re buried or turned to ashes. Once when the last time your name is spoken. Closure means Donna has died the final time.

I’m not a shut in or recluse bathing in isolation. This state is my stasis. My home is my space. Leaving the house can be a forced exercise with no benefits. I do it so I can etch myself into the lives of those on the street. I want to show them and myself I was still here visible, connected, and alive. Alive, well that’s a rather relative term. I’ve not felt alive since Donna died. The spate of invites, dinners. and talking that embraced me following her death were diminishing. Lives and life moves in the ebb and flow of the tides. Other lives did. I felt stuck in the amber of my grief.

I could have reached out more and made an effort. I could have but, I didn’t. I was a one trick pony that could only jump over a single bale of hay. Trotting in the same circle kicking up sawdust approaching that lone bale and jumping. Only to do it again and again until the saw dust on the ground in the tent became a well worn track. Over and over on repeat until no one came to the watch.

I was boring. The subtext, which no one heard when I spoke of Donna, was exposing my fears, doubts, and shame of being me in this state of being. The words and memories I shared were fingers writing on a wet fogged mirror after a shower, making a heart. The face in the mirror was unseen.

When asked by someone I would pull a random memory up to share.

“Donna was working on 42nd street and hated the food there.” I shook my head as I spoke. “Working downtown there were places to grab a slice or sandwich.” The one listening was not sure where this was going.

“So I’d make her a sandwich nearly daily while she was watching TV. Dig through the fridge for fresh turkey, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and whole-grain bread. With much consideration and knowing how she liked her sandwiches. I put just the right amount of mayo on each slide of bread, build it with the perfect balance of ingredients, and cut it in half diagonally because she liked the way it looked geometrically.”

My hands were mimicking placing mayo on the bread. I was back in time doing it. I’d fold my hands as I described how I wrapped in wax paper and put it in a bag with her name on it. Then look at the listener and feel embarrassed.

I’m not happy to be me. Others didn’t complain or seem to noticed when I did speak about Donna, loss, and grief. They would listen kindly. It felt unfair to them I wanted to care for them not throw them into the deep end of my grief. Until I got bored. You can only play so much grief solitaire until you realize you’ll never win.

I was Donna’s caregiver as she was dying and caregiver for our life together. I was always a caregiver. Not a self giver. I really cared about others. Caring and doing for others is my way to be noticed or thought about. I did for them and they would think of me. Maybe even say something nice at my eulogy. I resolved not to project my endless suffocating loop of grief and Donna onto others. To talk about all kinds of other things and it worked for them, not for me. To talk about them and their lives. They did not need to feel the vastness of my loss in it’s a horizonless vista. They did not need to know I was not done with Donna or her memories. They did not need to know I was done with myself. Holding on to Donna and our home was my holding on in isolation. Holding on to her memories. Memories I wanted to share so others would see who she was and is. I wanted the world to notice her. They didn’t. This one trick pony needed to be put out to pasture.

Walking outside among others was a way to feel I was one of them without having to tell the story that screamed inside me. To just be part of the mundane who had places to go and things to do. Brief cases, backpacks, packages all the symbols of life realized. I masqueraded among these busy ones. Avant en around strollers of pink or blue or grey being navigated like sleek cabin cruisers around the Cayman Islands. Side stepping delivery folks pushing pallets of boxes pilled high and gently swaying to the rigors of the sidewalk cracks that would break your mothers back. Stepping aside to allow hand holding couples absorbed in laughter and lattes never seeing me. Slowly moving among the busy ones heading to somewhere. To be seen as part of the living not feeling unseen. Our shadows touched.

From the time I started this wandering ‘look at me I’m still something’ to today waiting for the elevator there was a deterioration of hope. Why bother, I knew I was becoming less visible to myself and others. All my sharing of Donna with others was become less visible. I held the thought, maybe someone will notice me just one more walk. At home. In our home I saw myself connected, embraced, and seen. Seen when I made the bed. Seen when I cleaned. Seen when I cooked for one. I knew Donna saw me and that seemed to be enough to hold back the reality of being unseen.

In my wandering I was simply a flat grey shadow on a littered sidewalks. Just a shadow that rose and fell as I moved. A shadow keeping pace with me not letting me out of sight. Raising up over black plastic garbage bags. In that moment the shadow vanished. Then it emerged again onto the concrete flat and grey. Sometimes the shadow of my head would hang over the curb. Taking shape of the curb, bending over the edge grey in a puddle of water poorly reflecting me. I looked at the shadow and wondered how could the unseen cast a shadow? The busy ones walked over my shadow never looking down to step carefully over or around. My shadow had no dimension or shape that needed to be avoided.